"Poetry is a life-cherishing force...." - Quote by Mary Oliver

“On poetry: Everyone wants to know what it means. But nobody is asking, How does it feel?”

“In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that.”

“Every adjective and adverb is worth five cents. Every verb is worth fifty cents.”

“The poet should seize the Particular, and he should, if there be anything sound in it, thus represent the Universal.”

“There was no really good true war book during the entire four years of the war. The only true writing that came through during the war was in poetry. One reason for this is that poets are not arrested as quickly as prose writers.”

“I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else.”

“You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind.”

“Precisely because we cannot predict the moment, we must be ready at all moments.”

“For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere.”